Thursday, March 26, 2009

Louisville - Day 3


The weather continues to be pretty crappy here in Louisville. It's also hard to adjust to being on the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone - so the sun doesn't come up (well, it theoretically comes up - but with the clouds it's not always easy to tell) until well after 7:30. So the early am walk to the Convention Center is a bit weird when you walk through the "hamster tubes" from the Marriott - you are over crossing over the streets in the dark. 

I got the booth early this morning - anticipating a heavy 
morning of registration, AETL distribution, and, I was hoping, booth sales. It was a pretty busy morning. The AETL distribution alone kept us busy today - it felt like I opened at least 25 boxes just by myself. I had a little chuckle this morning when I walked around the corner past the reg area and realized that Tamara and I were dressed nearly identically today. 

The first general session speaker, Alfie Kohn, was pretty good - a great public speaker who knows how to make people laugh. The most memorable part of the session, though was that it started out at about 70 degrees and ended at about 40 degrees. Brian swears he saw snow at one point. Apparently someone complained that it was too hot and for the rest of the day, I swear it was like a meat locker. Even grown men wearing suits were complaining about the cold. Even the exhibitors complained. Susan kept calling, trying to get them to crank it back up, but it never 
did improve. To warm up, we would go outside in the cold rain. 

CJ will be pleased to hear that Roger Uhl took her directive quite seriously. He gave me a two-second heads-up to prepare my camera before he went in for an actual kiss on Ron Yuill. The photo says it all. Ron made me laugh several times today. One story will have to wait until I am back at the office, but the second one dealt with David McGee trying to find a shirt. He claimed that Shelli told him we had ordered some "special green EbD shirts." I kept telling him that we had no such animal - but he persisted. Finally, Ron just turned to him and said, "what size do you need?" I don't know why  it made me crack up - but we just weren't getting through to David and so Ron sort of just got smart and played along. It turns out that Shelli had told him about our "Mission Green" shirt and he just got confused.

Today I had Steve Moorhead in stitches with the story about a certain teacher in Ohio who faxed me 15 copies of a student's Tylenol permission form instead of a photo release form - for a photo that didn't exist. It made Steve ashamed to be from Ohio. He had some additionally revealing stories about said educator. Will share upon return.

I've met some really cool people here who give me a lot of hope that there is an up and coming generation of really talented educators. There were some new faces at the T&C meeting, too - and I have a renewed hope about reviving that journal this year. 

Went out to dinner with Mo, Tamara, Lari, Brian, Ron, Fred B., and David W. We had to split up into two groups, so I sat with Fred B, Ron, and Lari. I'm not sure how, but somehow we had a "Cheeseburger epidemic" at our table - all four of us ordered cheeseburgers. (And they were good.) 

I am beat and it's late and CJ was SO right - two blogs was probably not my best idea. It's taking me over two hours a night to sort and edit photos, write, and upload everything. See how dedicated I am?




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